Saturday, April 8, 2017

Dystopian fiction in the age of Trump, Brexit and Zuma.

When the going gets
weird, said Hunter Thompson, the weird get going. Well, the going has never been weirder. America is ruled by a
dangerous buffoon, aided by a family of cyborgs. South Africa's situation is
not dissimilar, although, thankfully, we lack the power to launch missile
attacks. Liberal democracy has failed so
badly that citizens are voting out of
desperation for whatever looks most different from said liberal democracy.
Which perhaps explains the growth surge of Dystopian
fiction. Wikipedia lists one example in the 18th Century - Gulliver's
Travels, by Johnathan Swift. There are eleven examples for the 19th century. By
the 20th, the list is growing exponentially, decade by decade.

On the 29 January,
2017, the BBC posted brief list of The Trump Era's top selling
Dystopian Novels, featuring George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Sinclair
Lewis. Writers imagining the worst, hoping that if they portray it artfully,
humans will read, understand and avoid.